Homepage > Thai Youth Issues > Happy families are fewer and fewer

Date: 12th April 2001, Bangkok Post

Sanitsuda Ekachai

Family Day is almost upon us once again. For many kids, this is one of the most disturbing days of the year; it aggravates their pain and alienation as the products of broken homes.

For these children, the only good thing about Family Day is that it occurs during the summer recess. This means they don't have to be part of school activities that glorify family ideals. Such things make them feel like misfits.

Mother's and Father's days are worse. They are celebrated grandly in every school-with a complete lack of sensitivity to children's feelings and social realities.

One popular school activity is the paying of respect. Children are asked to bring their mothers on Mother's Day and their fathers on Father's Day. This causes a lot of agony among children who don't live with their parents. Or among those whose parents don't live together.

Children from broken homes are forced to attend this ceremony, to bear witness to the smiling faces of the other kids and their parents on the ceremonial stage-and to feel the hurt swell in their hearts each year when Mother's and Father's days come around.

Why do we keep punishing our children like this, year after year?Another popular school activity for Mother's and Father's days is the family picture display boards. The children are asked to bring pictures taken with their mothers or fathers. Those who cannot are often questioned by their teachers why they are not living with their parents.

No wonder many children say they don't want to go to school on Mother's and Father's days.

Not only are the children disturbed. The parents are affected as well. Parenting is difficult enough when you have to do it alone. They want schools to help nurture their children's self-esteem and explore their talents. The last thing they want is for schools to make their children feel bad about themselves.

To be fair, many teachers also are unhappy with the way things are done. One BMA teacher said recently that more than half of the pupils at her school are from broken homes. But the glorification of the family must go on; it is state policy.

How realistic is the picture-perfect family image made up of a father, a mother and children all living together happily?According to the Ministry of Public Health, the divorce rate in Thailand increased from 8.3% in 1987 to 12.9% in 1996 and to 20.8% in 1998. In other words, one in five marriages ends in divorce.

Many believe these figures do not reflect the complete picture. Visit any village anywhere. It's plain the children live with their grandparents. The children's parents are away working in the cities-many of them separately. This sad reality is not correctly reflected in the state's statistics as migrant workers normally do not register their marriages.

Many of these village children also are staying with their grandparents because their parents died of Aids. More than one million Thais are now afflicted with HIV or Aids. More than 100,000 children under 15 are Aids orphans. And the number is increasing.

None of this should be interpreted as meaning that the children who live with both their parents are all happy. Domestic violence is rife. So is the sexual abuse of children. Fathers' rampant trysts with their mia noi , or mistresses, have also inflicted deep emotional wounds in countless children's hearts.

One boy one year reportedly refused to pay respect to his father during the Father's Day ceremony. He later told his teacher he was angry with his father for beating up his mother just the day before.

The myth of the happy family is fast becoming just that: a myth. Glorifying the family is farcical-and cruel to our children. It must stop.

Sanitsuda Ekachai is Assistant Editor, Bangkok Post.sanitsuda@bangkokpost.net